Category Archives: night

What a Question!

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“Do you prefer flying at night or in the day?” the young Flight Attendant asked.

What a question!

“Definitely day. I prefer to sleep at night,” I promptly replied.

But there are consolations to flying at night. Constellations too.

The ancients must have had better eyes, better imaginations, to be able to form those figures in the sky. I can pick out Orion’s belt but the rest of him is obscure. The Southern Cross is pretty easy. Perhaps we have too many distractions.

What never fails to captivate me, though, is the full moon shining down on a carpet of indigo sea, shedding a trail of pewter below; visions of cities like sparkling gems strewn across an ebony blanket; picking my way through ghostly towers of cumulonimbus, lit from within and without by  daggers of brilliant platinum, piercing the darkness; entering some sort of time warp on moonless nights when we seem to sit motionless with only the changing cockpit displays to suggest any progress; and the gradual retreat of darkness as the sun emerges, boldly victorious, to herald a new day.

So perhaps I do prefer flying at night after all.

Stephen Tomkins
Hong Kong
13 March 2024

Craving

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Like verdant bumble bees hugging the trees,

A hive’s worth of leaves are abuzz on the breeze.

Saluting, inviting and bidding farewell,

They whisper a gentle, restorative spell.

 

Never intruding nor forcing their will,

They beckon us linger, they bid us be still,

For only in silence, will we hear them speak –

The trees know the leaves hold the solace we seek.

 

They live for a time and, when that time is done,

The breeze calls them home again, each one by one.

No need to be sorrowful, no need to mourn;

As fresh leaves appear, our souls too are reborn.

 

Stephen Tomkins
26 December 2019
Melbourne

Tom Bradley

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A throaty airport van

Gives expectant birth to

A flight crew of black and gold and white

As they weave their way into

Tom Bradley

In the bustling dead of night.

 

Moaning steely birds

Circle high above,

Seeking respite and yet,

Constrained by forces unseen and unheard,

Flash their lights

In bold disdain –

A petulant display,

Both impressive and absurd.

 

All the while, surly uniforms,

Wearing their silent threats,

Corral the hapless voyagers

Through grim functionality into lines neverending,

Until they emerge

Into a bright carnival sideshow

Of excess and endless spending.

 

As lures for the prey,

The birds in their various plumages

Are reluctantly tolerated

But banished to distant piers,

Lest they deter the captives

From parting with their currency –

A farewell eliciting no tears.

 

Stephen Tomkins
3 November 2019
Los Angeles

Resistance Is Futile

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sleep-deprived-workers

Slumber wakes inside her room,
Her soothing Siren song seducing,
Drawing me into the gloom,
The sweetest nothingness inducing.

Down into the void I fall,
Weightless in the inky dark.
It doesn’t frighten me at all –
Waiting for a dream to spark.

Once aflame, it rages on,
Sweeping me just where it will.
Abruptly, the inferno’s gone,
And, once again, the world is still.

Just how can sleep be so seductive,
Even when I do resist?
Succumb, I must, lest she’s destructive,
Ruling me with silken fist.

Stephen Tomkins
16 January 2016
Sydney

Photo credit:
lucien.uchicago.edu
sharperiron.org